Cornelia Dai joined Hadsell & Stormer, Inc. (presently Hadsell Stormer Keeny Richardson & Renick, LLP) as an associate in 1999.  Ms. Dai’s practice specializes in individual employment cases, class actions involving violations of wage and hour laws, and other civil rights and international human rights cases.  She has practiced in both state and federal court, and has represented clients at all stages of litigation.  In 2007, she and her co-counsel obtained a jury verdict of $2,500,000 in a class action involving violations of overtime and meal and rest break laws in Wang v. Chinese Daily News.  That same year, she was co-counsel in Rivera v. City of Los Angeles, a sexual harassment and retaliation case which resulted in a settlement of $600,000.  She has also been the appellate attorney on a number of successful matters, including Tatreau v. City of Los Angeles, a First Amendment case which she argued before the Ninth Circuit and in which she obtained a reversal of the district court’s grant of summary judgment.  She is one of the plaintiffs’ counsel in South Central Farmers Feeding Families v. City of Los Angeles, a case currently on appeal which was brought on behalf of over 300 low-income families in a struggle to preserve land for a much-needed urban community garden in South Los Angeles.  In addition, she was one of the Doe plaintiffs’ counsel in the state litigation of the international human rights case Doe v. Unocal, which involved human rights abuses by a large oil company against Burmese villagers.  She is currently co-counsel in a case challenging the approval of a Wal-Mart Supercenter development for failure to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act, Public Resources Code § 21000, et seq., as well as an action against various hotels in the Los Angeles International Airport area for failure to pass service charges on to workers in violation of the Hotel Service Charge Reform Ordinance, Los Angeles Municipal Code § 184.00, et seq.

Ms. Dai has been listed in Southern California Super Lawyers® – Rising Stars edition, published by Los Angeles Magazine and Law & Politics Magazine, each year since 2005.  She was featured in the July 2007 issue of Southern California Super Lawyers® - Rising Stars edition, in an article entitled “For Abusive Employers, The Dai Has Been Cast.” 

She and her colleague, Lauren Teukolsky, are co-authors of the 2004 update of “Employment Discrimination Law,” Chapter 6 of the National Lawyers Guild Employee and Union Member Guide to Labor Law.  Ms. Dai currently sits on the Executive Committee of the Labor and Employment Law section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association.  She is also a member of the California Employment Lawyers Association and the National Lawyers Guild.
 
Ms. Dai is a 1995 graduate of U.C. Berkeley, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology.  She earned her Juris Doctorate at U.S.C. Law School in 1999.